Cowled and eyeless,
the slouched friar on a slow mule
Dispenses Gospel to the road.
In the shallow fords and mountain clings
He loafs, the hooves of the mule
Sure, certain as bread and crisp water.

And after a bend, a scent - a smoke -
Affording comfort, at least for a moment -
A shack to weather the evernight.
And there, before fire, with crackling eyes
The deaf one blazed in a spectrum,
Unseen.

And what was a matter of course,
Became the matter of hands,
Testing the blisters of a moment,
The friar engulfed in the palms
Of the deaf one’s guidance.

And there in the flurry of fingers,
“Here is the tongue, here is the ear,
And here is the way forbidden to the blind.
Give me your hand that I may place the hammer.
Give me your hand that I may place the stone.
Give me the Word as exchange for the World,
And each we’ll find our own way home.”

I’ll send daisies
because they’re already dead,
bias cut for a few
last capillary pulls
of aspirin-tinged water -
soon to cataract, milky
in a lead
crystal
vase.

These are no “love me’s” or
“Love me nots”.
These are from he who knows
not love, but beauty - decay.

My darling little Aster,
this is the day of your death,
another year counted,
backward from a birth,
as each petal falls as love,
as paper,
as dust,
onto your dining
room
table.

Pull deep these gathered Springs
there, pull deep the wisp
of meadows once dreamt
soft beneath your feet,
and gaze into the yellow eye
about which all these
frailties
fall.

Think not me grim my darling.
Think not me cold and thin.
I am nothing but a florist -
the florist birthed within.

I dream houses.
I dream small rooms
behind small doors
in which small wardrobes
lead nowhere but trappings
of our mangled time -  
of yours and mine.

I dream chimney fires,
tongues between walls
and curtains hung like tar.
We were never long
in the vapors, strangers yes,
but a lope of gray shoulder
and a turning was you, I am sure,
everturning and blue.

I find you in the floorboards,
scuttled in dust and debt,
heaped for a match,
for a flicker,
but nothing is scorched in this.
Rather what crushes here,
the burdens of rooves on cinder,
the cracking of small rooms,
small scores
never carved from a plan,
compress what should be at rest.

I cry “Wake”, each morning,
I cry “wake” to find you,
tragic in the sheets,
bound before the fan ,
mumbling something to someone,
flexing your hand. Yes, I see you,
tangled, but dreaming I think,
twitched of some else tomorrow,
stitched to your own land pink.

I saw a picture of you today,
that crow's foot smile, your eyes
blue behind wisps of bang,
arm around his shoulder,
same old still,
and I felt nothing.

But then again,
I was small fish to fry,
and you laughed and said no,
you are a whale and went away
that Tiananmen spring.

And there was fear in your voice,
strung out, evacuated, long on the line
and coming home, unnerved.

I missed you at the terminal,
you didn't wait.
But that was no nevermind.
You met me at the station,
red on your breath,
giddy with a gift.

You pressed that sterling
Shandong bell in my palm,
that small Shandong bell.
The bell I keep in the never box,
behind the broken watches
and shells.

You called me a whale once,
but when you returned from away,
you pressed a small Shandong bell
in my palm and held it there,
impressed it there with a finger,
that bell with the small fishes,
chasing each other's tails.

In this winter called Leviathan,
gorged be the meddles of men
lurched there, rustbound in ice
and enzyme.

And all that arcs over, whether
the crust limbed trees, or the white
tresses of sleet pinged on our heads,
mocks like a maul.

Roused and thus cursed by the makers
of beasts and things craving anvils
and the nails of undoing, undoing,
undoing us all.

And though it was said "Thou breakest
the heads of Leviathan in pieces..."
it is the heads of all men that break,
it is the wilderness fed.

What can I say?
I was a bad sunrise,
quick scudded to cloud
and withholding.

Look at it this way,
it was a great day
for pictures,
unshadowed,
no hotspots
to burn away
in a dance.

We were a function
really, a shallow
angle of incidence,
a glancing blow,
mathematic,
not prismatic,
no split beam,
just one garish
morning thing,

and a slow
overcast
trundle
to a setting.

I can smell my own pits,
my night sweats,
****** up in my week
unwashed robe.

I am disgusted.

And yet, there,
in the garment bags,
lingered in your suits,
your suits I brought home
from your funeral
in the sands so long far gone,
remains these same
and bitter musks.

And there, in the bags,
the pastes of rose wallpapers,
struggled up but aligned remain.

And there, in the bags,
a spruce topped Goya,
thick hipped as forests
and earth angels remains,
there before a sniff.

And though I sit here
in the acrid smoke and
coffee fumes, wondering
breakfast and baths,
you stand stiff as dry-clean,
tall on the hangers,
held and never squandered
for a tear, there,
thankfully there,
the scent of you remains.